Outdoor electronics
Sealed compute that has to survive a real climate, not a lab bench.
Hardware teams use Howard for the work between the brief and the CAD: architectures, calculations at the real condition, and an argument that updates when the chamber disagrees.
Request access40 W module, IP66, 4000 m, cold start at −40 °C, five years outdoors. Don’t cook the board. Don’t shatter the seal.
The supplier sheet stops at −40 °C. Interpolating past it would invent a five‑year seal. Buy the cold‑set test, or pick a grade rated lower.
Built with 10 hardware teams
They lose them to datasheets written at 23 °C, to ChatGPT inventing thermal conductivity, and to solvers that will happily mesh the wrong box.
Howard is the associate that sits in front of the CAD and the chamber: intake, architecture, calcs, then a revision when the world disagrees.
One thread for the whole problem
Function, climate, power, life, constraints — and the unknowns listed rather than assumed.
A materials family and the exact condition that would end that concept. You pick; Howard argues.
Thermal networks, contact resistance, cold start, CTE stack, snaps and seals — at the temperature and altitude you actually have.
Howard names the study and what to bring back. It does not pretend a mesh is an argument.
The chamber disagrees, Howard patches the assumption that was wrong and recomputes everything downstream of it.
40 W module, IP66, 4000 m, cold start at −40 °C, five years outdoors. Don’t cook the board. Don’t shatter the seal.
Every number in the memo came from a tool. If Howard doesn’t have k at that temperature, it says so.
Not a replacement for you
| Howard does | You still do |
|---|---|
| Structure the problem | Own the product |
| Propose how it could work | Pick the architecture |
| Run handbook physics at the real condition | Stamp, tool, and test |
| Update the argument after a chamber run | Make the call |
Howard is decision support. It is not a PE license and not a test lab.
Sealed compute that has to survive a real climate, not a lab bench.
Parts that have to drop, snap, and tool — at volume.
When the first article comes back warped or hot, and the argument has to change with it.
If your job is “search the vault for a bracket we already designed,” other tools exist. If your job is “will this survive the climate we actually have,” that’s Howard.
Trust
Your projects, files and revisions are never training data.
Units, source and as‑of date travel with every numeric result.
Two bracketing points from one source at one condition — or Howard refuses.
MatWeb, CAMPUS and Granta are looked up, never embedded in the product.
An enclosure, a seal, a thermal path. You’ll leave with a pack a senior ME can mark up, not a pretty mesh of the wrong machine.